Colours of the Damned: The Colour Red
by Insarai Arys
Summary: First in the Colours of the Damned: First up is Red. The colour of passion and anger and rage and blood. Who bearth this burden...?


**Title:** Red

**Author:** Icassica

**Universe:** Bleach

**Theme/Topic:** Renji and his hair.

**Rating:** K. It's all safe for the kiddies.

**Characters:** Renji

**Warnings/Spoilers: **Soul Society Arc for the fact he's mentioned and possibly the bount arc. Whatever. If it doesn't make sense you're not there yet.

**Word Count: **565

**Time:** Eight minutes.

**Summary:** The colour red. A thousand colours and a million shades. Each with its own meaning. And yet, there is a man who encompasses them all.

**Dedication:** Bekki, my friend for telling me to do something with colours.

**A/N: **Well I got bored and I decided to do something with Bleach and well...here you go. The first in a long line of the Colouring Foundation Series. Please review and tell me what you think of them all.

**Distribution:** Warn me please but then you'll be free to take. Just a word of warning; please don't try and pass it off for your own work. It's unfair and it's not going to help you or me. I don't mind if you stick on the moon if you credit me somewhere even if it's really small at the end. Rant over...For now.

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Red:

Red. One of thousands of colours, millions if you counted the shades. The colour of blood, of passion and love and hatred and pain and royalty and the Devil in us and Sin and Temptation. A thousand shades of a single colour. You'd be there forever trying to find the perfect one so we just make do. "It's nearly right" we say or "It's close enough" we grumble. But it's never good enough. Not bright enough or too dark or too dull. But sometimes, very occasionally, Mother Nature brings the perfect colour to the most imperfect person.

Take Abarai Renji for example. He's loud and brash and outspoken. He dislikes being beaten, loves his alcohol and is proud of the fact he can out-drink almost anyone. He's a Rukongai street rat right from the time he was woken up after death. Never knew a life different so he made it his trade mark, his sole connection to his former life.

He barely passed his exams, found himself a bizarre zanpacto with a snake-tailed baboon for a spirit and flunked his way out of one division, beat his way into a second and charmed his way into a third. Fifth, Eleventh and Sixth respectively.

Most call him a punk, a stupid ape, a fool and a thug. But those that do, don't see the man behind the hair. They see the anger and the rage and the violence the hair colour is known to represent. They don't see the red of the promises he's made to his friends in the red of the sunset, the red of the blood he's bled for those promises. They won't see the red of the passionate man inside him, the red of the man who has love unanswered in his soul.

The red of a man who lives life on the edge because there's no other way to live it and the red of the man who wears his hair like the nobility wear their robes and kimono; like a symbol of his superiority. It's the same thing; just not the same. It's the same shove-it-in-your-face kind of deal, except he can't change his hair like they can change their robes. He can't take off the mask like they can, remove what isn't them. Because his mask is his hair, his binding the same thing that is his freedom from uniform black and brown. It's so wild, so outlandish, even in a place where the dead are found and the building are constructed out of stuff that does not exist in the eyes science, it stands out. It makes them look, stare and point and talk behind their hands.

But Renji doesn't mind. He doesn't mind at all. He likes the attention and the drama his hair creates. The only reason he keeps it and doesn't dye it. It would make his life easier. He could walk down a street and people wouldn't laugh and point. He could be normal and ordinary. But Renji doesn't want that. Not at all. He didn't fight his way to number two in the Sixth division for nothing. He wasn't sixth seat of the Eleventh or eight seated officer of the fifth because he was ordinary. Because his red hair also stands for one more thing; the exhibitionist in him.

And of that he's proud and wouldn't give it up for the entire world.

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Review for me? Please. 


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